Campagna deserves serious credit for its transformation of commercial office space into a compelling Italian country trattoria. Hanging bulbs could pass for strung outdoor lighting over the almost-rustic interior scene. Suspended farmhouse wooden shutters and spiky bird-nest chandeliers draw the eyes down; cascading wall planters bring the outside in, and modesty panels on front windows cleverly obscure diners from traffic and the traffic from view. If Campagna's goals include spiriting diners away from Malta to the Italian countryside, it very nearly works.

First impressions, however, did not bode well. Campagna was conceptualized for a family farm in nearby Charlton, until red tape tied things up. Now it occupies a red-brick office building, the kind popping up everywhere from Delmar to Saratoga Springs, with mixed tenants, a rear parking lot and a foyer directory. The trend for commingling a restaurant with counseling services and physical therapists (or a spa and gym) makes for strange bedfellows: At six o'clock, a commercial cleaning crew is in full swing, vacuuming hallway carpets and disinfecting shared bathrooms under interrogation-wattage lights. Strolling the corridor to Campagna's door is more like showing up for a medical appointment than a dinner date.

Co-owners Joseph and Elizabeth Montemorano, former pharmacy managers with Italian blood, have done everything possible to disguise Campagna's commercial bones. Mr. Montemorano — please call him Joe — is older and old school, greeting us by name (and mistakenly giving my husband my alias), personally introducing servers and sharing the opening highs and some kinks when meeting the uptick in walk-ins.

Beverage: (**1/2) Welcoming full bar and a short cocktail and beer menu. Two craft beers on tap. Accessible wine list with a few interesting inexpensive selections. Wines by the glass, $6 to $9; by the bottle, $20 to $80, with one outlier at $130.

Service: (**) Friendly with warm visits from the owners, but hit-or-miss when busy.

Personality: (**1/2) Country farm-to-table cuisine in a family-friendly Italian setting.

Overall Rating: **1/2

The menu is refreshingly slim in its presentation of antipasta, primi and secondi. This isn't the multipage battery of Italian-American cuisine – chicken Parms and scallopines trotted out by rote, as if leaving anything out might upset some terrifying, omniscient Nonna. Campagna is intent on serving real "food of the country" — simply prepared, locally sourced, traditionally made and eaten at home. Bread, pasta, sausage and cured meats are house-made, and meats never frozen. Here, farm-to-table exists more as an extension of their families: an Italian grandmother's recipes lovingly translated in the kitchen, shared meals with relatives in Sonnino, Italy; curing techniques borrowed from an uncle with an Italian grocery; growing up with a father-restaurateur. It's all there.

Even so, in the hands of head chef Ali Benamati, formerly of MezzaNotte in Guilderland and Henry Street Taproom in Saratoga Springs, Campagna finds room for a contemporary edge. One pre-starter course is a chain of delicate tenderloin discs intriguingly topped with marinated enoki mushrooms ($12) and bravely placed over a silky Gorgonzola dolce ringed with chartreuse-green pistachio oil. Each bite gets the subtlest crunch from sea salt crystals that draw out the meat's beautiful flavor. It's simple and complex and deserves gobs of crusty bread to mop it all up. Staying with modern textural play, four roasted and blistered acorn squash wedges ($12) are toppled over on a smooth but slightly bland-acorn squash mousse. Fortunately it borrows pops of sweetness from balsamic fig and saba (vin cotta), saltiness from sheer sheets of house-cured prosciutto and shaved Pecorino, even pepper from crisp baby arugula. It's a beautiful, simple dish.

Under Tuscan lemon chicken ($20) — browned, bone-in and skin-on, natch — an unctuous four-cheese polenta shines in a fond-rich mushroom demiglace. Milky, plump diver scallops ($30), more rustico-protein, are oozy and caramelized from a screaming-hot sear and piled on a farro risotto hill (spared the "farrotto" portmanteau). The light and bright spicy butternut squash sugo sauce mirrors the scallops' sweetness, but the risotto is surprisingly loose, the farro chewy. I marvel that the whole get up looks like a motte-and-bailey castle with a safety-yellow moat.

Just shy of three months old, Campagna is drawing a local crowd, but a swell in walk-ins seems to unravel the neat configurations of the reservation book. As tables filled, the front of house began to lose its way: cutlery was cleared but not replenished, long waits fell between courses and drinks, and — after watching our server slowly handing out menus while the chef repeatedly and feverishly pinged the kitchen bell — I nearly popped in to collect our mains.

Such slips are mostly matters of training that should ease with time. A cheese and charcuterie board was pretty, though our struggling server mistook the apricot mostardo for eggplant and the gorgeous puce of house-cured duck prosciutto for pork. A hacked-up cheese heel should have been rerouted to a cooking pot. Campagna's artisanal desserts and authentic house-made gelato sound promising, but the apple-cinnamon bread pudding ($9) was dry and as craggy as a topographical map of the sea floor.

Campagna perhaps best shows its style in the supple folds of Benamati's fresh pappardelle ribbons and the heady pungent richness of slow-braised wild-boar ragu. The restaurant hasn't quite found its groove, but in its food there's a clear sense of home.

Dinner for two — including two antipasti, a primo, two entrées, one dessert and three drinks — came to $167.

Susie Davidson Powell is a freelancer writer from East Greenbush. Follow her on Twitter, @SusieDP. To comment on this review, visit the Table Hopping blog, blog.timesunion.com/tablehopping.